Thursday, May 24, 2007

Mexico City

Garry, who lives in Mexico City, via the wonderful Horizons Unlimited, kindly offered to put us up (or put up with us) for a few days and show us around town. Luckily Garry is also a biker and has ample parking for 4 bikes at his place to the south west of the centre. We spent a couple of days sight-seeing in Mexico City and I was more than pleasantly surprised. The centre of town has some really great buildings and it´s pretty easy to get around using the metro system however even so, it did take the best part of 2 hours to get back to Garrys workplace as you also need to take a bus from the metro which grinds to a halt in the congestion that never seems to let up.

Mexico City

Garry also took me and HB to the BMW garage (one of the many there but the best one) where they took a look at my gearbox problem where I´ve been having difficulty changing from 1st to 2nd). I was expecting the worst when the said they´d need to open it up to take a look and it might take a month to get any parts from Germany. There are parts in the US but I´d need to order them myself and there would be no warranty. Well thats BMW for you. Anyway, after a quick look, the head mechanic said he was 90% certain it was a simple loose connection with the gear pedal and with that in mind, I gave him a list of other things to do to the bike including valves, throtle body synch and cleaning my totally filthy air filter. The next day, when we picked up the bike, the total bill was an unbelivable $75. I do belive Garry was (and probably still is) sick as a dog! When ever I visit a BMW place at home, I might as well give them 250 quid up front just to get them started.

HB getting a good seeing to

We met up with Garry´s son, Lloyd and the four of us went to visit the pyramds to the west of the city. Garry is an old hand at this place so instead of parking in the first car park like everyone else, we park up in the second and go see the two big pyramids. After that, we drive back to the first cark park to see the museum and save ourselves a 4km walk. And thanks to Lloyd, we were also enlightened by a visit to the El Santos coffee shop, which is owned by the gimp-mask wearing wrestling ledgend´s son. On sunday after tinkering with the KLR just for a change, we were treated to a roast lamb dinner with proper roast tatties and everything, fantastic!

El Santos!

On monday, our host was again kind enough to see us out of town because lets face it, I wouldn´t stand a chance of finding my way out of the city. We were taken out to another beemer place on the outskirts of town (just how many BMW garages are there here?) where we said Muchos Gracias to Garry for looking after us so well over the last few days and headed westwards.